According to statistics made by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a total of 6.1 tera (T) short messages were sent across the world in 2010, that is, each mobile phone user in the world sent 1300 short messages. The short message service has now become the world's largest telecom value-added application industry, and the revenues of the short message service (SMS) in 2010 reach US$114.6 billion. Judging from the trend in the next five years, the short message service is still the most influential information service. As conservatively estimated by the ITU, the global short message service revenue in 2013 will reach US$177 billion.
As regards a terminal manufacturer, how to bring a better experience for a user is one of the important strategies that make the terminal manufacturer stand out. In addition, with the short message service being the most commonly used service on a mobile phone terminal, helping a user use the short message service conveniently is an easy way of enhancing the experience of the user of a terminal.
Currently, the biggest problem for a user to use the short message service is slow and tedious input. Especially, in the case of replying to an SMS message, the problem is more prominent. For example, at a meeting, an urgent SMS message is received and needs a reply, but using a mobile phone for a long time at the meeting is impolite, which results in a poor user experience. How to help a user use the short message service conveniently, for example, to reply to an SMS message, is an urgent problem to solve.
An input technology based on voice recognition can effectively help improve the input speed in a mobile phone application. Well-known Chinese voice recognition input systems include IFLYTEK, Chinese Academy of Sciences Tianyu, and so on. Using the voice recognition technology to reply to an SMS message can enhance the user experience. However, in an open area (without limiting the vocabulary scope and the speaker) noisy environment, the voice recognition technology is not practical due to inaccuracy, and is not applicable when speaking is inappropriate and inputting is urgent, for example, in an application scenario in which an SMS message needs a reply at a meeting. Therefore, user experience still needs to be further enhanced in the solution that uses the voice recognition technology to reply to an SMS message.
In a solution that replies to an SMS message based on a fixed rule, a received SMS message can be classified according to established classification conditions, and then the SMS message is replied to according to content preset by a user. The specific technical solution may be implemented by a terminal or a network device, or implemented by a combination of the terminal and the network device. For example, the user may preset reply content “Sorry, the SMS message is not replied in time because the mobile phone is powered off” for an SMS message received when the mobile phone is powered off, and the content will be sent automatically in response to the SMS message received when the mobile phone is powered off.
This SMS message replying solution can partly meet requirements. However, the manually set rules are limited, the reply content is fixed, and the effect is not satisfying in most circumstances. In certain circumstances, such automatic replying may lead to misunderstanding and make the user feel disgusted. For example, when B is outside the service area and receives a help-seeking SMS message from A, if preset content “I cannot see the SMS message currently, please contact me later” is returned, after receiving the reply, A will believe that B is making excuses deliberately, and the automatic replying function is counterproductive. Therefore, in such an SMS message replying solution, the user experience still needs to be enhanced.